It’s quite an incredible turnaround for Pierre-Luc Dubois with his new team, after a trade and a monstrous contract signing.

The 25-year-old Quebecer, who was one of the most interesting players on last summer’s trade market, is seemingly on the verge of alienating the Los Angeles Kings.

In his podcast, the excellent Martin McGuire, who does the radio play-by-play for the Canadiens, just stated that the team’s management is simply not happy with how things are turning out with Dubois.

“They are not happy with Pierre-Luc Dubois. […] I don’t know if he’s hiding behind Danault and Kopitar. I don’t know if because of that, he doesn’t really feel the urgency. He’s comfortable, contract-wise. It’s not delivering what we paid for. We knew why he [Rob Blake] was going after Pierre-Luc Dubois. It cost, he paid, but you don’t look smart when the team you traded with [received] a player like Vilardi.” – Martin McGuire

It wasn’t so bad during the first few months of the schedule, as the Kings were still winning a lot of games, but since the start of the new year, that’s completely no longer the case.

They suffered 12 losses in the month of January, with only three small victories. This is unacceptable for an organization that aims for nothing less than high honors.

Head coach Todd McLellan was even relieved of his duties in recent days.

Was the coach a problem for Dubois’ production? I don’t believe so, but it’s possible that this change could allow him to start afresh with a new coach.

In 48 games this season, PLD has scored only 10 goals and has 20 points. This is clearly insufficient for a player who just signed an eight-year pact at $8.5M annually.

It’s worth mentioning that the Canadiens were long in the running to acquire his services last June. In hindsight, we can say that Kent Hughes dodged a bullet by avoiding a serious problem.